A Family Reunion Read Online Free

medical school, fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming a heart specialist. Now she worked as a cardiologist at a huge hospital in Boston.
    Then there was Alexia. Taye doubted Alexia was carrying around any burdens, since some family members hadn’t ever showered her with any glowing expectations. She’d had a beautiful voice and everyone in the family had known that, but none of them ever suspected her voice would carry her as far as it had. At least no one had known other than their grandparents, Mama Idella and Poppa Ethan, and Taye and Rae’jean. Now Alexia had made it big as part of that singing group Body and Soul and was living on easy street. She never failed to remember the girls’ birthdays and always sent them advance copies of Body and Soul’s new releases.
    Taye thought about all those weekends as teenagers they had spent with Mama Idella and Poppa Ethan. Those had been special times for her, Rae’jean, and Alexia. At least they were special times until Valerie forced Brandy’s company on them. Brandy had always been a pain in the butt…just like her mother.
    Taye then thought about another cousin named Michael, who often had spent those weekends with them. Three years older than they were, he was the grandson of Poppa Ethan’s first cousin, Henry. She smiled remembering the crush she’d had on Michael from the time she’d turned thirteen, a secret she’d only shared with Sharon, Rae’jean, and Alexia. News that you thought yourself in love with your cousin wasn’t something you wanted to get out. But still, as a teenager, she’d gone to sleep several times with thoughts of him on her mind. Her feelings for Michael had lasted until he left for the air force just a mere two months before her sixteenth birthday. She shook her head, thinking it was hard to believe that as close as she, Rae’jean, Alexia, and Michael had been, now they rarely communicated with one another because of everyone’s busy schedule and lifestyles.
    Alexia was busy out in LA making hit records, and Michael, the last Taye had heard, was living somewhere in Minnesota working as a pilot for a major airline. His wife had gotten killed in a car accident around six years ago, and he was a single father raising his daughter.
    As Taye pulled off the main road onto the lane leading into her subdivision, her brows drew together when for no reason she began to feel uneasy. It was only after she had turned the corner to her street that she understood the reason behind her uneasiness.
    Her parents’ car was parked in her driveway.
     
    Deliberately Taye straightened, lifted her chin, and inserted her key in the door. She didn’t want to remember the scene that had ensued the last time her parents had visited. Her father, as usual, had tried being the peacemaker, which wasn’t an easy task when you were married to Otha Mae Robbins Bennett. She had had the nerve to question how Taye could afford such a home in a nice area of Atlanta. She’d all but accused her of being a kept woman.
    What her parents didn’t know and what she had refused to tell them was that Sharon had loaned her the money for the down payment and she was in the process of paying Sharon back. If things stayed on track, the loan would be paid off by the end of the year.
    Her mother, Taye accepted, would forever blame her for the embarrassment she’d caused the family by having not one but two babies out of wedlock. Although she knew her parents loved her and their granddaughters dearly, the fact still remained that she had messed up her mother’s well-laid-out plans for her future.
    And to this day Taye’s mother never let her forget it. That was the main reason Taye rarely traveled to Macon, where the majority of the Bennetts still lived. She would love to take the girls and just spend a peaceful and relaxing day with Poppa Ethan. But if word got out that she’d visited Poppa Ethan without visiting her own parents, it would create an even bigger division between